Horror and self-awareness often go hand in hand. A lot of that relationship is owed to how horror at its best and rawest can be the most critical social commentary on what is happening in the real world at the time, like the first two Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies, for example. Then you also have movies like Scream in the 1990s which acknowledged the various tropes and cliches of the very genre as a response to the falling popularity of slasher movies after their boon in the 1980s. I would argue that there were plenty of self-aware horror movies that existed before Scream, like American Werewolf in London for example, but there were few that were so overt in their acknowledgment of the various tropes as with Scream. Regardless of the respect I have for its director, Wes Craven, I am no fan of Scream. My dislike has less to do with the fact that it’s self-aware, and more to do with a paper-thin plot that points out all the flaws of slasher movies and then replicates them without a justification other than “look at the characters in this movie do what they’re criticizing.” Thankfully, another movie would come along decades later that would have a self-awareness and appreciation for the genre that would do a little more with the plot to justify everything that was happening.

More than a decade ago, I was one of the last horror fans to see The Cabin in the Woods, despite hearing how much I would like it through word of mouth. Friend after friend would tell me “It’s right up your alley” and I would take it at face value, but be unmotivated to watch it. Once I finally found the time, I fully understood why so many of my friends told me I needed to watch it and immediately bought it on Blu-ray. It is a movie I have watched more times than I can remember and is one of the movies I would bring with me if I were staying in an isolated cabin somewhere—along with The Thing and The Shining. There are details I can nitpick about The Cabin in the Woods, but the overall experience is something I enjoy enough that I could watch it and be ready to watch it again the very next day.

It’s also one of those movies that manages to stay entertaining with multiple viewings despite having a rather significant twist half of the way through. If you have not seen The Cabin in the Woods and are unaware of the twist, then you should avoid reading or watching anything about it. Just go see the movie because I’m going to touch on spoilers, and the less you know, the better.

What is It?

The Cabin in the Woods is about a group of college kids—Dana (Kristen Connelly), Curt (Chris Hemsworth), Jules (Anna Hutchison), Marty (Fran Kranz), and Holden (Jesse Williams)—taking a vacation at a secluded cabin somewhere in the woods who encounter horrors and are systematically killed off. The kids consist of a jock (Curt), a slutty blonde (Jules), a stoner (Marty), a nerd (Holden), and a ‘virgin’ (Dana). Sounds pretty standard, cliche, and familiar, doesn’t it? Well, those short descriptions are not entirely accurate and there’s a reason for that.

The movie does not actually open with the kids before the title appears. Instead, it opens with two men—Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford)—in a facility having a very dull conversation about Hadley’s significant other prepping their home for their potentially impending baby. They chit-chat by the water cooler for a bit, encounter a distressed person from the chemical lab department, and then hop on a cart to drive to their office. The conversation continues on the cart until it is suddenly cut off by a jump-scare noise and the title of the film.

This opening scene is important in letting you know that something is up about this movie before it gets to the seemingly cliche portion of the film. The dialogue of the scene is full of witty humor, and the tone is very nonchalant, even when someone mentions how dire their situation is without giving the audience context to know what the characters are talking about. The scene is so intentionally out-of-place and vague that it’s almost necessary to have the jump-scare noise and the big red letters spelling out The Cabin in the Woods on screen at the end of the conversation to let you know that you are watching the right movie. Had I watched this in theaters, I would have been wondering if I walked into the right room until I saw the title.

As the kids make their way to the cabin, their personalities are introduced as more than the average one-dimensional characters you might see in a Friday the 13th movie as I mentioned above, while still going through the same process of many horror movies, like encountering a spooky guy who warns them away from their destination, for example. The whole time, there are also little hints of this facility’s involvement in the kid’s experiences along the way. You eventually learn that the goals of the facility are not in the best interest of the college kids, but it doesn’t start to become apparent what those goals are until the basement scene. The stoner of the group, Marty, is the only one who notices some things are amiss and points them out. Unfortunately, he already has a reputation for tinfoil-hat theories so no one takes his warnings seriously until it’s too late.

Now to briefly get into the spoilers in the synopsis. I feel the need to bring it up simply because I’ve read/watched reviews of this movie in which the reviewer said that everything the kids are going through is part of a “science experiment.” While the facility that is running everything behind the scenes is filled with scientists and advanced technology, what is happening is no experiment. An experiment suggests that the facility employees are testing a hypothesis or doing something that hasn’t been done before. However, it’s revealed that there is no uncertainty in what they’re doing and that they’ve not only done this before, but lots of other places around the world are doing it too.

It’s not an experiment; it’s a ritual performed by people who look like they are doing something scientific. The choice to make it look like an experiment seems pretty deliberate as a juxtaposition against the perceived biases we often hold towards science as being something that is not considered part of religion or rituals—though we’ve seen a shift in that perception in the past few years. Regardless of whether you realize it’s a ritual or not, the stakes are pretty clear as to what happens if it all fails, and suddenly you, as the audience member, have to question who you’re rooting for because the goals of these different characters who manage to earn our sympathy one way or another are diametrically opposed. The kids eventually come to understand what’s at stake and they too have to confront this choice of who deserves to live or die briefly before the movie ends.

What Makes it Stand Out?

Killer Script

The Cabin in the Woods is one of those movies that’s fun to watch with someone who has never seen it before and knows nothing about it because you get to watch their realization as to what is happening slowly creep across their face while also enjoying the jokes along with them. The script and dialogue in this movie are tightly written with a lot of instances in which something is uttered that is seemingly unimportant at first until you realize how important it is later in the film. In particular, there are a lot of pieces of dialogue shared by the facility workers that explain why certain things happen or how something works that is tied to the ritual, which is briefly mentioned before moving on to the next thing. It’s all explained in a matter-of-fact manner that makes it more believable, even if it’s not. For example, when the chemist interrupts the water-cooler conversation, she’s setting up the stakes of the situation in how all of the other ritual sacrifices around the world have failed except for Japan, but the other two flippantly disregard her concerns, making the audience less concerned with her issue as well. If you haven’t seen the movie before, you don’t even know what she’s talking about in the first place so the significance of this dialogue tends to be forgotten until a second viewing.

There’s plenty of strong visual storytelling as well, from simple imagery to big moments of action. For example, the opening images that appear before the water-cooler scene briefly show art that depicts ritualistic sacrifice to tip you off as to what the movie is about. It’s simple, and if you were watching the movie for the first time, you wouldn’t necessarily understand its significance right away.

As for the big moments, there’s a particular example that comes to mind. It gets set up at the beginning of the film when the kids make their way through a mountain tunnel on the road to the cabin. A poorly animated, CGI eagle smacks into an invisible barrier in the chasm to set up a big scene later in the movie as well as establish that they’re heading into a zone of no return. In a climactic moment that leads up to the scene that has been set up, when the surviving group of kids are attempting to flee in their RV, the facility members realize the mountain road is still open. Sitterson races up to the demolition department and hotwires the explosion just before the kids escape. It doesn’t seem like much other than a tense moment in which the drama is ratcheting up, but it actually does several things at once which are then expanded later in an exchange of dialogue.

It does its main job of creating drama with a race against the clock
It tips off Dana to the fact that there are puppeteers controlling their situation
The fact that the road was not destroyed already suggests that something is going wrong with the puppeteers’ plan for the first time
The dialogue with Sitterson that takes place after this event mentions how the order didn’t come in to blow out the road and that something from “upstairs” prevented the order, which sets up the return of a character that was assumed dead

There are a lot of effective moments of setup and payoff in The Cabin in the Woods with lots of little clues along the way to make the journey that much more enjoyable. What’s more shocking about it, however, is that the script was written in just three days, according to IMDB. That shows how talented Joss Whedon & Drew Goddard are at writing and only further highlights how terrible modern filmmakers are at writing these days.

Jokes that Slay

In addition to being a horror movie, The Cabin in the Woods is pretty funny. It’s not quite as frequently laugh-out-loud funny as something like Shawn of the Dead or Tucker & Dale vs Evil, but it has a lot of chuckle-worthy scenes. The moment that Marty is introduced always gets a laugh with how he’s so stoned that he locks the doors to his car by reaching through its window before checking the door handles to make sure it’s locked. It’s a simple and short moment that you might miss if you blink, but it’s a good example of how this movie operates with its humor. When the horror hits, Marty continues to be the funny character who brings a bit of levity to the situation.

Marty’s not the only funny character, either. A lot of the interactions between Sitterson and Hadley are pretty entertaining. They have a good rapport with one another and often jab at each other with some witty banter that seems somewhat improvised. Every time I watch the scene in which they have the conversation with the harbinger on speakerphone, I crack up.

Bloody-Good Horror

In addition to being a funny movie, The Cabin in the Woods does its horror pretty effectively as well. There are a few jump scares here and there, but it has plenty of build-up and atmosphere to its menace. There’s an abundance of gore, practical effects, and brutal moments that are done well to land it in the horror category. I’ve watched this movie with friends who aren’t horror fans who enjoyed the movie overall but were scared by the horror moments as well, which is an indication of its capabilities.

Perhaps the part that every horror fan loves is the elevator & lobby scenes. It becomes a game of spotting all the horror references. All the various monsters and creatures that are captured within their respective prison cells are interesting to look at and become that much more intriguing once they’re let loose in the facility. I think that having a big red “Purge” button that has minimal security requirements that just releases all the monsters at once is pretty dumb, but what we get in exchange is a very memorable climax in which all the crazy creature designs come out. There’s a killer clown, unicorn, tree, bat, and robot in addition to all the ghosts, zombies, serial killers, werewolves, and other creepy crawlies.

If there was any criticism I would hear for this movie—besides the purge button and the fact that only one guy intercepts the protagonists in the elevator—it was the fact that the kids are killed off by the zombie family when the zombie was already such a worn-out horror creature by 2011. I think it’s just a person lamenting the fact that we don’t get more of the crazy creatures at the end. I didn’t have an issue with the zombie family because they were still effective monsters and fit well into the events that occurred at the end of the movie. It’s not like there isn’t plenty of creative setup and payoff to the different members of the zombie family or all the other creatures in the vaults.

TL;DR

The Cabin in the Woods is right up there with some of my favorite horror movies and favorite comedies of all time. Clever writing, solid acting, witty dialogue, and shocking moments that still manage to entertain make this one of the movies that I eagerly agree to watch whenever it’s suggested. If you’re a horror fan and you haven’t seen it, somehow, I hope you didn’t have any of the details spoiled for you because you should go and watch it as soon as you can.

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